


The Dark Remedy

by MagnusOpum



Series: Harry, You've Made A Grave Mistake. [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Asexual Character, Blind Character, Blood Magic, Dark Magic, F/M, Hogwarts, Hogwarts First Year, Hogwarts Second Year, Hogwarts Third Year, Hufflepuff Harry Potter, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Rituals, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:34:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24487549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagnusOpum/pseuds/MagnusOpum
Summary: Harry can save Lupin, Sirius, Cedric, everyone who never had to die. He's been given a second chance to make everything right and stop Voldemort before he can cause so much pain. The catch; Dumbledore is the one who killed him, who accidentally sent him here, and Harry will do everything in his power to prevent Dumbledore from finding out his future.A dark look at a Harry Potter time travel fix it story.
Series: Harry, You've Made A Grave Mistake. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793644
Comments: 10
Kudos: 129





	1. Chapter One; The Broken Home

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: going to try and update every Monday.

Dumbledore’s faded eyes twinkled regretfully, and Harry’s war-born reflexes never had the chance to move before-

_“Avada Kedavra_.”

So quick a death, they said you never see the green. 

-) **Chapter 1; The Broken Home** (-

_Dumbledore’s alive_ is Harry’s first thought as he graces the world of the living. His lungs burn as he breaks the surface of reality, and he stumbles forward as if falling out of the sky. 

_He’d never intended for me to survive._ For a second he is suspended in the air, half-in-motion stuck, and then he falls; plummets, really, like a burning meteorite. Harry Potter lifts his hands to his eyes and feels tears, hot salty tears rolling, rolling, racing - from tears come sobs and then uncontrollable sobbing and then a strange lightning paralysis that strikes him down, dead.

_Dead,_ his throat is clogged, _I was dead._

He’s alive and he can’t breathe and there is an eerie ghost living in his skin. He’s alive but he’s dead and he can feel his dead body slipped inside the skin of his living one. 

“-Boy!” 

Harry forces his head out from his thoughts, pulling his brain out until the bone clicks. He’s not dead, he tells himself. He ought to be used to this by now; surviving The Killing Curse. But, his breath still catches, when he thinks of that blazing light racing towards- 

There is a booming sound on the wall of his cupboard, _knock knock knock_ \- _cupboard, when did that get there?_ “Boy, you have 5 seconds…” Harry’s body comes back to him like a sack of bricks to the skull. His fingers reattach to his hands and his hands to his shoulders, an electric wire zapping all the way up his shoulder until his fists are clenched in his sparse childhood blanket. _When did I get here?_ “5…4…” By instincts as old as he’s had his eyes, he gropes for the glasses in the dark. “3...2…” His little-boy brain shrieks that he does not want to know what happens at the end of that countdown-

Like a bag of loose bones, Harry falls out of the cupboard, and onto the floor, and onto his face, squinty and sweaty like a fresh-wombed mole-rat. He makes the mistake of looking up into the burning sun of her face- _Ohnoshe’smad-_

Aunt Petunia’s eyes bug out and narrow to black specks in the span of two seconds, “Boy! Don’t just lie there! Get up - up, up, up, shiftless!” 

Her shriek is more grating than he remembers; as is her smack. 

Harry flounders about like he’s headless; hits himself in the face with his glasses, so hard that Dudley hears the _boof_ \- and sniggers - from the hallway. He swallows back all the screaming in his mind about how has he, why the Dursleys, on what planet does he-

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry gets to his feet and zombies his way to the kitchen - making the most stressful plate of eggs in his life - trying to calculate what in the ever loving _fuck_ had happened - while Uncle Vernon trumpets aloud about that morning’s cricket. 

Harry had completely forgotten about cricket; what kind of Englishman did he think he was? _English boy,_ he realises, staring down at little-boy pale-as-moon hands. Harry Potter was a little boy who’d be locked up so long that his skin had forgotten the taste of sunshine, he remembers. 

His brain dreads how rail-thin-weak his body will look; He’s spent a year vigorously training, tanning, toning for his confrontation with You-Know-Who. All those months in a tent, in the forest, with his friendships straining and the taboo hanging over their heads and his stomach growling and that locket _breaking_ them all to bits; all for nothing. 

Ten year old Harry Potter was the boy who hadn’t been taught how to eat, and he looked it. 

“ _Mummy_ , I’m _hun-gry_ ,” his cousin - who’d shaken his hand, who’d said _not a waste of space_ , who’d cried when he’d left, who Harry hasn’t _heard_ from in a year - whines from the dining room table, bouncing in his seat. He has that want-it-now glint in his eye that Aunt Petunia completely overlooks as she shushes him and gives Harry a glare that causes ghosts to shiver up out of his throat. 

A weird bubble of nostalgia catches in his throat; somehow he’s missed this misery. 

Dudley is much fatter than he remembers - think double-decker, not walrus - and he eats as if he is trying to carve out the room to keep his holiday luggage down there. He’s had enough eggs to out-source a hennery, this morning. 

“What about the bacon, boy?” Uncle Vernon looms, dwarfing Harry so much that he forgets he’s seen Lupin die today. He forgets everything he’s ever made of himself. He can’t feel that Gryffindor stomach in him, can’t put words to an instinct as old as the concept of rulers and rules, can’t remember the glory of catching a snitch with his mouth - he’s a nobody, again. Half his brain, half his life-span, has sludged out his ear and made a mess of the kitchen linoleum. 

It’s like he never left, like magic was never real. Harry hasn’t gotten his letter, yet. 

Harry is ten years old again, and he scrambles to the fridge. The trembling in his fingers has dissipated. This is his first broken, bitter-twisted-safety home, and no matter how much it hurts sometimes, Harry has always survived it here. He feels himself walking these decade old foot-prints in the sand. Memories once washed-out fit him like a glove and this fantasy world, this half-childhood, is as vivid as the Great Hall’s starlit sky. 

_This is a vivid flashback_ , Harry tries to say out loud, but all that comes up is “Yes, Uncle.” He burns himself; but at least he doesn’t burn the bacon. 

-)

If you ask ten-year-old Harry his favourite animal, he’d say he doesn’t have one. He’d be telling you that he doesn’t have time for things like that; that nobody comes and rescues you in the night, no matter how much you pray, and nobody looks twice at the felony in the making who lives at Number 4. 

Of course, no one asks ten-year-old Harry questions like that. He’s Dudley’s freakish twitchy cousin, and talking to him is risky enough that it’s a safer bet to make friends with Piers Polkiss - the boy who’s always chewing gum and likes to hold people’s hands behind their back while Dudley beats them up. 

Seventeen-year-old Harry stares, in the dark, with his glasses still on, at the ceiling of his cupboard after a long day remembering things he’d tried to forget. He’s tear-grogged, as if his emotions have slobbered over his whole face like a ferocious dog-tongue. His stomach twists when he thinks that right now, somewhere in the world, Sirius, _his first dog_ , is alive and kicking and screaming. 

His Gryffindor self kick-kick- _kicks_ a hole in Harry’s brain as it tries to get him to get _up_ , to _move,_ to get _up and do something and help them all_ . His bravery is burning a fire loud enough to drown out the Devil’s Snare that lurks in Harry’s brain. The fear that chokes him, the little-boy tininess, the _but-but-but_ blubbering, is completely decapitated. All heads of the Hydra shrivel up and die; Harry is still in a war-zone and he is ready to fight every single Dementor until Sirius is free, until Pettigrew is captive, until the whole Wizarding world knows there is a spirit in Albania currently malingering and possessing the kind bumbling Quirinus Quirrell who will go on to teach a whole host of First Years improper wand technique and the worst defences against vampires. Yes, Hermione has a lot to say about prior teachings of Hogwarts professors when she’s left alone with enough Defence books to sink the Titanic. 

But, Harry, curled up and warm-sad and world-tired, knows it’s not that simple; because the one man he wants to go to, the one man who knows all the answers, the one man he’d trusted his entire future with had killed him. Who is he meant to go to except for Dumbledore? All Harry’s connections, everyone he’s ever loved, Mrs. Weasley, Remus Lupin, Kingsley, even _Snape_ of all people - they all report back to him, all roads can be traced to misery. 

Harry is the most alone he’s ever been, because even as a child, locked up in this very same cupboard, he’d been comforted by misguided images of his parents - his could-be rescuers. Ten-year-old Harry had thought that the Dursleys had lied about so much, why would they tell the truth about his own parents, especially if they’d despised them so much? Harry knows the truth now; they are dead, and so is everyone he’s ever loved, because in this time, no one knows him.

Cutting through the despair like a patronus through the mists, a thought brightens in his head; _No one knows me._ **_No one_ ** _knows me. I can do it all over. I can fix it all. I can, I can save everyone who never deserved to die. Every mistake I ever made - this is the greatest gift I could’ve gotten. I never, I never have to start a war._

Harry’s war-brain ticks like a bomb, each thought feeling on the edge of _something_.

Step 1) Escape The Dursleys.


	2. Chapter Two; Escaping The Dursleys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a/n: hope people like this as much as the first chapter...

-) **Chapter Two; Escaping The Dursleys** (-

Harry Potter restlessly falls down into sleep; half the night it is difficult to know whether he is dreaming or not, as this tissue-thin half-reality obscures his senses. His eyes are nothing but blackness in the dark of the cupboard, and he cannot tell if they are open or closed, if he is awake or living a nightmare. His brain itches with the suspicion that Aunt has laid down a bunched towel outside his door to block the air and light and ‘contain’ his presence from leaching out and infecting them. 

Wet-faced he wakes - from tearful memories or the mugginess of his own breath he can't remember - and his dreams are fragmented images of catastrophe; _the burnt out eye-socket of a little girl’s doll as Hermione and him squat in the ruins under a bridge. The sky is grey and billowed and in each corner Harry is struck with the sensation that Snape’s ever-trailing robe is following them. He dreams that on Tonks’ gravestone is the name Nymphadora because no one survived to learn that she’d rather die than be seen dead with that name. A hippogriff flies them so stomach-swoopingly fast that his ears are burning. He sees Sirius’ drawn figure in shadows, thin enough to fit in the cracks of his mind, and tries to reach for him only to fall forward - over and over in a loop of failure, never quite reaching his ghostly presence. When he looks up again, no one is ever there; a small pit of abandonment lingers with him even though Sirius was never there to begin with._

He has that gummy feeling in his mouth and bites open his own lip to remove the taste of ash. Blood no longer tastes metallic and sticky, but like the rush of fighting and that time he'd bitten off a Death Eater's ear to escape from being pinned. Harry has just swallowed an ear from a war that’s never actually happened. Last night, after snapping the Elder Wand in two, they’d taken the tube to Hermione’s cold and sombre childhood home - an off-brand expried milk carton is on the counter, where Ms. Granger had made the tea before Hermione had cast the forget-me spell, _obliviate_. Ron and Hermione, upstairs. Harry, on the couch, fever still in his bones as he expected to wake up from this taunting day-dream in the heat of battle. Part of him wondered if he would sleep and never wake up. Harry selfishly wished he'd never had to kill a man, even one who had caused so much suffering. 

A waking apparition of Dumbledore’s ghost had visited him - though, now, Harry realises, there was no ghost, there was only lies - and split his soul, again. 

-) 

Uncle Vernon’s snores are loud enough to rattle the stairs. The cupboard door creaks, and in the spirit of all misdoings, is far louder than reality should allow. Harry has trained the wince out of his face but the discomfort of disobedience tightens his jaw and he feels in his checkered 1990s pyjama bottoms for that wand that will never reappear. There is no security in 1990, only dreaming days and sleepless nights, and bacon, far too much bacon. 

For a crime that he had never ever _considered_ in his past life - the outer world of Harry-the-ten-year-old had been full of boogie men hiding in shadowed alleys with movie-man knives and grins that stretch the circumference of the waxing moon - Harry is disappointed at its ease. No jump-scares waggle their fingers at his daring; No Aunts’ shrill shrieks break the sound barrier.

In a house that has never cared for him, Harry’s heart clenched in resentment somewhat unfounded. In a twisted way, he'd wanted to be kept here, to be missed if only in a hateful way. Nothing has been keeping him here but horror stories of orphanages lit in the firelight of Uncle Vernon’s sadistic grin and a stubbornness to disprove the neighbourhood gossip. Harry-the-ten-year-old had been trying to say, _no, I'm not a reckless runaway. I do belong here. I don't need to run._

 _I’ve never been a prisoner,_ Harry realises, as his hand slips open the second lock _No one has ever wanted to keep me here but myself_.

A lull in the gravitas must spark it. Things had been going _too well_.

“Where are you going?” The sleepy curiosity mixed with a greediness of how he can abuse this knowledge plagues Dudley’s voice, “Mum wouldn’t like you leaving the door open for burglars.” The lilting tone is the stuff of childhood memories, of dobbing Harry in for being on the roof at school - _accidental magic_ he knows now - or telling Uncle that he'd snuck burnt bacon from the kitchen bin or spitting in Harry’s hair and calling it ‘dog shampoo’.

Harry’s face is statue stone. He doesn’t even bother to turn around. Dudley is a child, a diminished figure, a _baby_ ; he’s not afraid of Harry Hunting when there’s monsters like Voldemort. He’s _not_ , no matter the size of his hands. 

“Dudley, go back to bed.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Dudley’s voice is rising like a kettle to boil, “You’re not the boss of me! I’ll do whatever I want, freaky, and Mummy said you’re meant to be in your cupboard.” 

Harry lets go of the handle - a frisson of fear races up his spine. _They can’t find out. Uncle Vernon will skin me alive. I’m not a cat, I don’t have nine lives._ “Dudley, Dudley,” Harry tries to use his voice as that skin balm that Aunt uses when Dudley spends too long in the sun at the beach. “There’s no need to get testy…” _Aloe vera_ is what Harry was aiming for, but it came off more as one of those stinging white creams that Dudley always wriggles away from.

Dudley shrieks, “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid!”

“Keep your voice down,” he hisses, and jerks Dudley by the elbow towards the door, “You’ll wake them up!” 

Harry seriously needs _nothing_ like this right now. This was supposed to be an easy up-and-go escape mission and now here he is, trying to tame the unstoppable whirlwind that is his spoiled bratty cousin. 

Dudley’s eye glints in a way that says _I am going to eat a lot of cake after this_ , “Why not? I should tell Mum! She’ll be so mad, you’ll not leave your room for a week…” His voice wheedles like when you blow through a blade of grade. 

Harry is not scared of the cupboard, he’s _not_ , but somehow the words still leave his lips, “What do you want, Dudley?” And then he has to sigh, because Dudley has won with just those five words.

Dudley yanks his upper arm out of Harry’s grip and waddles his way _away_ from the front door - which, no, _please_ come back - and begins to speak like a villain at the end of their movie, ready to wrap up the plot ends, “Well, my birthday is in two weeks, and my room is so full I won't have room for presents, so you will have to clean it. You _can’t_ come to the zoo with me and Piers because you ruin everything. Joey at school wants to play soccer, and I don’t know how to play, so you need to teach me or I’ll tell Mum. I want all your hidden sweets - I _know_ you must get _some_ sweets, or something. If not, lift it from the shops or take it from Fat Billy, he _always_ has sweets but he's too fast for me to catch. It doesn’t matter-”

Harry is reminded that for every hour a child is missing, the likelihood of them being found halves, and that for every second that Dudley speaks the likelihood of Uncle Vernon barrelling down the stairs, and kicking Harry’s face in, doubles. 

“Dudley, _please_ ,” Harry begs, and guides him shepherd-style back over towards the door, “Just, be _quiet_. Your mum cannot hear us, _cannot_.”

Dudley’s eyes narrow, and he continues as if he'd never stopped, “But what I _really really_ want to know is why you’re going out and why Mum can’t find out.”

And Harry would _really_ _really_ quite like it if the Earth just swallowed him whole, right about now, “Um…”

Dudley raises his voice and began to trumpet, facing the stairs, “ _Mu-_ ”

Harry slaps a hand over Dudley’s mouth and hisses, “Okay! Come with me!”

-)

The black is the kind that can eat you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; a worse black than the Black Death. Harry squints at the sidewalk to make sure he’s not slipping into the curb, and has his hands shoved wrist-deep into his pockets. Dudley is purposefully stepping onto every crack he sees because he’d heard the caution of ‘breaking his mother’s back' as less of a caution and more of an option. He'd also heard from Uncle Vernon about the ‘pointless handicap money’ that those with disabilities can apply for. Dudley would like a new bike to never ride and if he needs Aunt Petunia to fall off a ladder to do that, he’s willing to make that sacrifice.

Harry thinks it would be fitting if Dudley broke his ankle in one of the cracks, to teach him a lesson of sorts, but life is hardly ever fitting. 

Dudley is already panting and they’re only on Lickamore Street. A scarred boy lives in the cottage at the very end of the cottages that hardly count as cottages anymore and every year the bravest of the Girl Guides run past screaming _beware the beast of Lickamore street_ . Harry had met him once, when loitering in the park where dementors had tried to suck his face off, and he’d begun to throw stones at Harry after he called out his name; he’d heard Aunt Petunia’s rumours about the school for criminally insane boys. _Good times_ Harry snarks, and kicks a stone at the boys lawn, snapping a daisy in half as it lands. 

He whines shrilly, “How much _longer?”_

“London,” Harry snipes.

“London?” Dudley stops dead centre in the street, and gapes with his jaw is hanging off its last hinge, and then shrieks so loud Lickamore Kid’s windows rattle, “ _London?!_ My legs will die! I’ll die! How could you- You tricked me! You brought me out at midnight, with only slippers, and, and, are trying to kill me! Mum is going to be _so mad_ , you’ll be grounded forever!” Harry can see the whites of Dudley’s eyes, and his pupil is contracted by the fear of intensive exercise. Dudley has never walked so far in his entire life.

Harry kicks a particularly crumbly piece of pathway towards Lickamore Kid’s house. Part of him wants to send Dudley back home and see if anyone would be quick enough to catch him; Dudley and Uncle Vernon would break through the Earth itself if they tried to run and Aunt Petunia’s intense _need_ to wear high-heels to impress the neighbourhood women would lead to the spraining of both her ankles. It would take a _miracle_ for them to... just like it might take a miracle for a twelve-year-old to survive an encounter with a basilisk. 

Sadly, the Hermione-shaped voice in his head wins out. One day, when Harry surrenders to the entreating vat of acid-shaped madness in his head, he will forget the sound of her and Ron’s voice and be better for it. 

The thought is a kick in the head, and Harry's emotions wheeze. 

“Dudley,” Harry pacifies, and fully understands why pacification comes from the word pacifier; because Dudley has always and will always be a toothless infant, “You wanted to know what I was doing and where I was going; I’m going to London. That’s what’s going on. I didn’t trick you, I was always going to London.”

Dudley’s panicked gasps haven’t stopped.

Harry tentatively stretches out a bony hand, and pats his cousin awkwardly on the shoulder, “Deep breaths… Cous. You don’t have to come to London if you don’t want to.” He wonders if this is a skill you can teach, or if Harry has something that can never be profited off; that no one would buy, even if they could. 

Dudley’s panic is overshone by the alarm system in his head that can somehow tell when someone is speaking down to him from a very high place, “I can do it!” He flicks Harry’s very light grip off, “Get off me! Show me what’s so special about London.”

Harry exhales, “Fine.” Sometimes he does wish death was permanent.

-) 

London at night reminds Harry of when you cast _revealio_ on a Leaky Cauldron bathroom; there are certain stains that wouldn’t exist unless you possessed the luck of Harry J Potter. The stains of London are the thieves, the low-end prostitutes that cannot afford the cleanliness required of the day-time Johns, and the muggers who are different to thieves in only that their weapon is not words but an actual weapon; usually a knife. Two ten year old boys walking the sooty streets of London is not Harry’s finest idea, and the deeper into the city they get, the more Dudley’s teeth retract into his gums and the further he hides behind Harry’s lean figure. To understand how silly that is, picture an elephant hiding behind a lamp post, and then make the elephant jump at every sound quieter than a mouse. 

Luckily, even if Harry’s body has forgotten, Harry's mind recalls the tricks to hiding in plain sight. 

In the war - which feels funny to describe it as a past event when it lies only in the yesterday-future of a world that may never be - Harry, Hermione and eventually Ron had needed to fit into the smallest, slimiest places of England. Bogs, sewers, Knockturn Alley dwellings - the darker side of magical London was mostly spared from the war’s vast damages, as the Dark denizens that lingered there were mostly already sympathisers - and in any attic that would store three travelling Hogwarts drop outs. To host the saviours of the world was a task few would volunteer for but Dumbledore’s grandeur opened doors - even ‘dead’ - and his presence had touched every corner of good people trying to make ends meet. Harry's gratefulness could never extend the full length these people deserved - and he could never thank them, for in this world, they only knew him as a baby who survived _avada kedavra._

A pudgy set of fingers tugged on Harry’s sleeve. “Harry, Harry,” Dudley had truly unravelled if he was calling Harry by his actual name.

“What,” Harry side-eyes a young couple of indeterminate gender wrapped up together under an alcove, snogging their brains out. _How romantic,_ the cynic in him grumbles, _a blanket of cigarette butts and old gum under the night-time sky devoid of stars due to light pollution._

  
Dudley’s whine has devolved into a whisper, and he jumps as the taller one lets out a giggly shriek at something the shorter one must have done, “How long? _Please._ ”

Harry shushes him, “Not long now,” and his eyes brighten at the glowing sign, _Leaky Cauldron_.

“ _Babe_ , shush,” The shorter one growls.

Dudley hiccups out a shiver, “How long now?” He’s that kid on every car trip ever saying _are we there yet_ every five seconds, and Harry gets the boggy shivery sensation of being _Dudley’s_ father for all two seconds before survival instinct kicks in; _I am not Dudley’s father._ Some things are objectively true, and in no possible universe could a Harry ever even minimally take part in the birth of a Dudley.

“We’re here,” Harry announces glibly, pushing Dudley slightly away from him and gesturing with a small sweep of his arm to the _Leaky Cauldron_ in all its lack of glamour. 

Dudley’s voice tinges red, “We came all the way here for what - a café? A _closed_ café?” He’s crying frustrated tears, and he’s cold, and he followed his stupid cousin to the middle of London only to-

Harry shakes the thoughts of out his head - _what the fuck was that_ \- and remarks dryly, “It’s not closed,” pointing to the 24 hour open sign.

Dudley heaves, and squirms in place with emotion, as if the pressure is building and building inside him and must be expressed before he explodes, “YOU’RE SO DEAD! YOU’RE SO DEAD SO DEAD SO DEAD! I WANNA GO HOME! I HATE YOU SO MUCH! I DON’T WANNA-”

“Roger, there’s _kids_ nearby,” the tall one glances at them uneasily, pulling away stiffly.

“-DAD IS GOING TO KILL YOU-”

“Baby, just ignore them,” Roger’s hand is trailing up her thigh, demanding _it_ , and he has been waiting all night, and won’t she just give it _up_ for once-

Harry’s head is burning, and Dudley is _screaming_ , and just-

“SHUT UP!” 

A wave of energy explodes from his body, and the air ripples with the power of it, and suddenly-

Well, Harry glances down at Dudley, then at the two teenagers, insensibly wrapped together. She’s got a hand on his crotch, Roger is drooling in her mouth, and Dudley is kissing the ground. 

One step forward, three bodies back. 


	3. Chapter Three; It's All Coming Up Luna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: apologies for the late update. It seems like I may not be a frequent updater; but whenever I have my next chapter written, I will post it. And my goal is that this will one day no longer be a WIP. I'm aiming for once a week updates at the minimum, and bi-daily updates at the best.

-) **Chapter Three; It's All Coming Up Luna** (-

_Damn my tiny arms!_ Harry attempts - for the _fortieth_ time - to drag Dudley’s prone figure towards _The_ _Leaky Cauldron_. Even in dirty night-time London, he’s getting a few funny looks, and a trench-coated man ever so hospitably offers to “dispose” of his “little problem.” 

“He’s not dead!” Harry snaps, checking his cousin’s pulse for the nth time, and gesturing violently to the sketchy figure before him.

Trench Coat quirks a brow, “Oh, really? Certainly looks a little dead from my angle… Awful pale, huh? Or is that just his skin colour...” 

Harry just stares. 

  
  


Trench whistles, “Well, I’ll be over there, being homeless and depressed, if you need me. Cash, not credit.” The dark-stained coat then glides back to a shadowed crevice in the brick with a jaunty wave, and Harry shakes the instinctive shudder out of his head; Londoners are weird, no doubt.

Just as he’s wondering if people would believe Dudley was drunk - _sticking on some sunglasses and using him as a ventriloquist dummy might work… minus sticking my hand up his arse_ \- an idea hits him, “Oi! Wait!”

Trench pokes a head out of a side-alley, his face illuminated a harsh crystalline white under the overhead streetlights, “You called, tiny little criminal boy?”

He squirms a little in place under Trench’s dark considering look, feeling younger than he knows he is. Trench has stained fat lips from smoking, and a sharp indent in his forehead - no doubt from someone throwing a frying pan in his direction for his attitude. Harry can relate. 

“I… er,” Harry gestures to Dudley, “Could you help me move him - into that pub over there, _The_ _Leaky Cauldron_?” 

Trench’s neck swivels and he squints at the dull wood-board sign, squished between the flashing neon of a pub crawl hot-spot and an antique bookshop with the windows shuttered down. 

His neck swives back to Harry, and he says, bluntly, “Can’t see for shit, little fiend, but I’ve got a good set of muscles on me.” Trench flexes his jaw, his only visible muscle, as the rest are covered by his oversized coat. “D’you have the cash?”

“Er…” Harry’s expression must have said more than his words, because Trench sighs - _kids these days_ \- and begins to wander off. 

“Wait!” Harry cries, “I can pay you back!”

Trench gives him a dispassionate look, “I don’t look it, kiddy boy, bu’ I _am_ a professional, and I expect professional pay. We’re wasting hours, you ‘ear me?”

“I can, I’m sure we can sort something out…” Harry says, glancing hesitantly at Roger and his girlfriend’s unconscious forms, and then back at Trench. 

Trench taps his jaw, wonderingly, and his feet begin to angle back towards the side-alley, “I’m pretty sure _more_ bodies means more pay, kid, not less.” 

Harry drops Dudley’s arm - which he’s been holding up uselessly this entire time - back down to the ground, and kneels down beside Roger and pulls out his pockets. A scattering of change tinkles to the ground, mostly pennies and the odd pound. Harry leaves Roger’s girlfriend untouched - it wouldn’t feel right to feel up an unconscious woman, no matter the circumstance. He scoops it up, lint and all, and holds out his hands to Trench.

Trench whistles, “Sweet treat this is, I love watching kids do their first crimes. Really warms m’heart.” He picks out the pounds, one by one, blows them clean, then slips them into the jars of small change on the many inner pockets of his coat. Within his jacket is a deep colourful library of jarred goods - one pounds, two pounds, buttons sewn into thin strips of fabric, marbles alongside glass eyes (all cracked or scraped), jams with curries and curried jams, and a container of clear white powder that Harry would rather not know the occupation of. 

He buttons closed the coat like a cloud covering the sun, and Harry drops the smaller than small change to its lofty death.

“‘Kay,” Trench says, striding towards Dudley, “You take the legs.”

-)

“Well… thanks,” Harry couldn’t quite meet Trench’s disbelieving eyes as he leant Dudley’s body against the askew door of _The Leaky Cauldron_. To Trench, the creaky door appeared as a very tangible, very uncrossable, brick wall that one could not even find in the phone book. 

Trench says, slowly, as if Harry might not understand otherwise, “I may be half blind, kiddy, son, but tha’s a wall.” 

“Thank you,” Harry repeats, and watches from his periphery as Trench seeps back into the shadows, with a shrug of his shoulders. 

Heaving as he supports half of Dudley’s weight, Harry knocks his hand twice against the door.

A questioning sound trails its way closer and closer, until a steel-capped boot cracks the door by a sliver, and a shard of warm honeyed light spills out onto the pebblestone street of London. 

“Sir?” Harry meekly inquires - being in the body of a child ought to be enough to pass but one can never be too careful. 

The door pulls inwards, and Harry grapples to keep Dudley from falling. A tall figure is suffused in light, and the muffled hubbub of late night drinkers and the sweet smell of butterbeer wafts out. It is the quiet twilight hour between the dinner time drinkers and the wild ones who drink for the sake of getting drunk. 

Harry’s stomach grumbles, and he wonders how long it’s been since he’s had a proper meal - wonders if that number is calculable. 

“‘Ello? S’a little late,” Tom, the barman, hair a lot less grey and sparse than Harry recalls, slowly lowers his head until he meets Harry’s eyeline. Cautious, yet kindly, as you would speak to a child, “Can I ‘elp you?”

Harry can hear his heart beating in his ears, _fuck, didn’t think of a cover_ , “Erm,” Tom’s eyes are slowly narrowing as Harry blusters, “My, my brother, Du- Duncan, he has narcolepsy, and he’s, well, not doing well.” 

Dudley lets out a snotty snore and Tom cocks his head, more curious than kind, “Narcolepsy?”

Harry exhales shakily - aiming for emotionally overcome, but not to the point of drama - and Tom’s eyes soften, a sun-beaten buttery brown, “It’s a muggle sleeping sickness - he falls asleep without meaning to, and you can’t wake him up.” Harry remembers trawling through books upon books in the public library as a child, wondering what his “sickness” is that Aunt and Uncle claim he has - wondering if there was a cure. 

“He’s a muggle, is he? Where’s your folks?” Tom, although clearly sympathetic, is unrelenting - the pitch black insidiousness of tonight is clearly not in Harry’s favour. 

Harry glances away, “My parents live in Scotland, out in the isles, and Duncan and I are here staying with my cousins. They’re… not kind people, especially with Duncan’s condition, and, and I'm a long way from them now, my family.” His mind flickers back to the night before yesterday, to Grimmauld Place, and he feels warm and cold at the same time. Warm, to have played chess with Ron, quibbled with Hermione, and cold, to have lost them both.

He doesn’t realise he’s crying until Tom rubs his shoulder through his shirt, “I can see tha’. Not too kind, are they? Come in for a bit, and I’ll get you a stew.” Tom hefts Dudley up over his shoulder, and leads a young-feeling Harry into the pub by a calloused hand. 

The door wails closed behind them. The dark browns and pale beiges of the present company lift their heads from their ales, for a moment, at the sound, before returning to their hushed conversations or mournful introspection. 

Harry is led to a bar stool while Tom rolls out a patchy stretcher from beneath the bar for Dudley to sleep on. Noticing Harry’s curious gaze, he explains, “We’re a 24 hour bar, and sometimes Magdila misses ‘er shift, so I’ll take a quick kip under ‘ere.”

The stretcher screeches at Dudley’s company, and Harry winces in sympathy, tracing the knots in the counter with bitten down fingers. His hands are so small and clumsy, like he’d fallen asleep lying on them and awoken with a flood of pins and needles; a strange dissociation, as if the hand does not belong to him. He wonders how he’d ever managed to hold a wand at this age. 

“So,” amidst the clanking of metal pots and pans, Tom scolds, “Why’re you out at night, in London?” 

Harry shrugs, and stares at the bar, thinking the less Tom sees of his face, the better, “There’s stuff I need to do in Diagon Alley.” 

Tom says blithely, “Stuff? You can’ be older than eight.” 

_I’m ten_ , Harry grumbles silently to himself, and his ghost-hand clenches itself. 

“How’d you ‘ear about this place, anyway? Thought you were muggle-born.”

Harry pulls himself off the stool, heart jack-rabbiting again, a mouse sniffing the cheese layed out oh so dangerously, “I’m not muggle-born.”

“Why’re you living wit’ muggles, then?” Tom doesn’t sound accusatory, but Harry’s ears turn bright red, with a sort of betrayal. _Why’re you such a nosy bastard?_

His hand pulls at his shirt, his expression is closed for business, and Harry says, “Look, mister, I appreciate your concern, but I do have things to do.”

Tom sighs, apologetically, and rubs the back of his neck, “Ah, I’ve gone ‘nd flobbed it again. Too curious for me own good, it seems.” Harry feels his annoyance thaw a little. 

Tom claps Harry on the shoulder, “Keep your secrets! Don’t let an old man bother you, ‘ey.” Harry lets out a breath, and thinks that maybe he’s just tired and hungry. 

Harry gives Tom a cheeky grin, as if to say _all is forgiven_ , “Look after my brother and we’ll call it even, eh?” 

Tom grins back with all 5 of his tooth-gaps, noddingly, and gestures for Harry to drift towards the back-exit - where Diagon Arch hides. 

“Need me to tap the arch?” Tom calls out, and Harry shakes his head - he’d learnt a thing or two as Dumbledore’s quasi apprentice. Things he’ll need now, to keep safe from the very man who’d taught them to him. 

-) 

Harry growls and hits the unbudging wall with both palms, flat. _FUCK YOU, WALL._

Maybe he’d underestimated the stubbornness of one of the _only_ entrances to the wizarding world. Harry’s a fool! Of course it would be hard to get into! But, really, _this hard?_ ISN’T THAT OVERKILL, MINISTER FUDGE?

Tapping the code with one’s finger, one’s magically charged finger; why had he even _thought_ that would work? Clearly, the wall is keyed into wands specifically, to magical signatures, so that it can identify every wizard that enters it like a passport check at customs- But then, shedding blood; is that not _also_ , a _tell-tale_ , passport? Isn’t it MORE secure, since one can just _STEAL ANOTHER WIZARD’S WAND?_ Just, _GUH WHY WON’T IT-_

“Why so mad at Mr. Wall?” 

Harry blinks, and turns around to meet the wide ocean blues of one Luna Lovegood. She walks forward, straight past him, and brushes her fingertips against the bricks. Her hair is wet like a drowned cat and covered in butterfly clips - a few of which, still moving. Harry’s brain tries to merge this quaint, quiet figure with the wild, unstoppable force at the end of the Last Battle - stunned and thrown across the room by a heartless Death Eaten, but who then awoke and kept fighting. 

“H-hi,” Harry says, suddenly unthinkably nervous. This is one of his oldest friends, and what if he makes a bad impression? What if all his friends hate him this time around? -

_Is it fair to befriend them again? To endanger them, when they’re just kids?_

“Hello, I’m L _uu_ na. Luna Lovegood ; though sometimes people get confused by the Blibbering Humdingers and they call me Loony. Loons are actually water birds, who dive underwater and converse with Mermaids, so I don’t mind it one bit!” She chirrups, like a bird, and draws a star with her pointer finger on the central brick of Diagon Arch. 

Harry half-expects the arch to open, but is relieved when it doesn’t.

“Hi, Luna,” Harry can’t help but smile, “I’m Harry, and I’ve never met a Loon before.”

Luna cocks her head, “Loons are just waterbirds, like ducks and geese and grebs. They’re quite common, really.” She walks right up to Harry until they are nose to nose, and asks, “Now, why are you mad at Mr. Wall? I must know as I am Mr. Wall’s knight, and I protect him, and so I need to know your extensions.”

“Intentions?” 

“Exactly,” Luna waits - and appears like she is willing to wait forever. 

Harry, suddenly embarrassed at acting so childishly against a wall, explains, haltingly, “Well, I wanted to try and open the Arch without a wand, and, I couldn’t.”

“Hmmmmmmmmmmm,” Luna pulls back in a death-defying swoop and kneels down in front of the wall, no doubt staining her bare knees. 

“Why’re you here, Luna?” Harry wonders, as she meddles with the dirt.

“Eureka!” She cries and holds a long - _ohmy_ \- wand-looking object to the air, before throwing it to Harry - who catches it because he is the youngest seeker in a century - and bellows, “I AM HERE BECAUSE TOM GIVES OUT FREE BUTTERBEER ON SUNDAYS AND DADDY IS OUT EXPLORING BUT IT IS TOO DANGEROUS FOR ME!” 

Harry grips the wand in his hand that feels like freedom, and gasps, “Why - are - you - shouting?” 

Luna tilts her head, “So I do not forget my power?” She taps her chin, “I am customarily either too quiet or too loud, as Mum says, and we are who we are because people say we are a certain way - so I am being who I am said to be! GOT IT, MR. WALL HATER?”

_Luna’s mum is still alive_. His chest clenches, and he knows that - unlike Dumbledore - he is not going to be playing the sacrificial game. He just needs a minute to figure out how to tell her without it being traced back to him. 

Harry says, “Why was there a wand there, anyway?”

“It’s a spare wand, of course! Just like a spare-key! What if someone forgets their wand, what will they do, Mr. Wall Hater?” Luna sing-songs the words, as if it’s a tune she’s heard many times before.

Harry blinks, “Well, I don’t hate the wall anymore. I have a wand.”

Luna grins so brightly that he forgets it’s night-time, and begins to dance around in a circle, “I have cured a blood-feud, before my own very very eyes. Such a great day, everyone is going to be so proud…”

Harry thinks his Luna was much more - tame, if that is even a word that can describe a Luna. This Luna is pure childhood adulation and insanity, and he can’t say he hates it. 

“Luna, would you not tell Tom you helped me? I'd be... embarrassed.” Harry taps the wand against the bricks, _one, two, three, four_. The wood feels dead, and he sighs, hopelessly, as he realises this wand doesn’t suit him or his magic. 

Luna hums very loudly, “I dunno, Mr. Redeemed Wall Hater, what if Tom offers me another butterbeer?” 

“What about a secret?” Harry offers, as Diagon Alley reveals itself to him - although it is too dark to enjoy it. The shop windows are darkened - and only open at 10AM, if he remembers correctly - and the streets are silent, as all awake at this hour are those who lurk in Knockturn. Nevertheless, an intact Diagon Alley causes Harry's heart to whoop with hope, at the though that perhaps it may never need to fall to disrepair. 

Luna enthuses, “Of course! Tell me, won’t you?”

Harry says, aiming for an ominous tone, “I have the thought that you need to tell your mum to be more careful with her experiments - I had a dream that said it could hurt her if she doesn’t.”

“Now, that’s not a very nice trick,” Luna whispers, and stares at him sadly, and Harry is struck by the thought that he’s made a very grave mistake, “My mum, she. Well, you already know, don’t you, Mr. Hate? Why would you salt my wounds when they already hurt? ...all salt does is preserve, and Daddy says we need to try and move on, to bleed until we stop bleeding and start healing. Mum always says if you’re sick, you’re sick and that’s that, and you should wait it out.”

Harry’s throat is stuck in this shivery, guilty, place, and he swallows, “I’m - so sorry, Luna.” 

Luna holds out her hand for the wand, “You’ve got to give it back. The wand belongs to the wall; he was just sharing.” 

Harry swallows, again, thinking maybe this world he’s returned to isn’t as clean of a slate as he’d hoped. His hand should be shaking. _He_ should be shaking, but all he feels is a quiet calm - a sensation that he'd gambled, unknowingly, and lost. Luna sees him as the type of person to wipe her mother's recent death in her face, and Harry doesn't blame her. He'd moved too quickly, too recklessly, without thinking for even a moment of possible consequences - he knew nothing about Luna's mother or her ambitions, of how she treated Luna or how she'd treat the Wizarding World. People aren't chess pieces, and Harry is no King, and no life can be sacrificed; but he needs to think things through in order for his actions to hold any visceral meaning. Harry can't act like Dumbledore, but at the same time, if he remains wholly reactionary and emotional then he'll never live long enough to make a decent change.

He returns the wand, skin prickling with numbness, and turns to enter the alley; _focus on today, and things you need to do today._

_The dangers of tomorrow will always be there, waiting._


End file.
